Features

Blogs, tagging, online identities, social bookmarking – these social software practices are hot technology trends with millions of people flocking to web sites like myspace.com, flickr.com and del.icio.us. Now UBC researchers David Vogt and Lee Iverson are looking at ways to bring these types of software together under one umbrella.

UBC students led a pilot project that used virtual models of Ancient Greek architecture to show what life might have been like in Athens in fifth century B.C. They re-created their own 3-D models of buildings in the Acropolis and the Agora based on their own research, using the same kind of technology used to create popular 3-D video games.

Blogs can be used in a range of ways, from a tool to manage course information, demonstrating professional tools and increasing student ownership in the classroom, to meeting learning objectives, Simon Neame, an adjunct instructor with UBC’s School of Library, Archival and Information Studies (SLAIS) has discovered.

Sandra Schinnerl, Associate Director at UBC’s Faculty of Forestry and her team faced 2 key challenges when they decided to use video-conferencing as a means of increasing course offerings and learning opportunities for graduate students. Find out about their approach, advice, and tips and resources on video-conferencing.

Jim Berger redesigned Biology 200 to use a combination of in-person class time and an online component. The in-person time divided into two parts: Jim lectures fifty per cent of the time and the other half is workshop time, where students work together in groups on problem solving.

Adam Frank’s Critical Approaches to Media course introduces students to a variety of intelligent, critical writing about media: print, television, film, radio, comics, and digital media. Adam and Lisa say that making the change to mixed-mode teaching has strengthened the focus and cohesiveness of the entire course.